Friday 25 December 2015

What scholars say...

Religion has been helping communities to get connected, to perform charity and to stick to certain good principles of living. It was meant to bring us humans a bit closer to our Deity.

Sad to say that religion has been abused in the past too.
Sometimes willfully, sometimes through well meaning misinterpretations.

It is good to remember at all times that even our very well trained scholars are still human.
No human is infallible and each human is bound to mistakes.

As I teach my medical students, we doctors have to keep up the highest standards and try to make no mistakes. But we are intrinsically human and mistakes do happen. There is no doctor who practices medicine and who can claim he has never made any mistakes.

So is it with scholars as well. If doctors make mistakes it affects the body, if scholars make mistakes, it affects the mind and soul. But if doctors propose therapies that sound strange or not right to us, we will start to think for ourselves or ask a second opinion and perhaps will manage to avoid ingesting the wrong drug. So we can do too with strange sounding advice from scholars. Actually what enters our minds and hearts and souls may affect us more than any medicine and we should guard the input with our own critical thinking and scrutiny very much.

Does it feel right, does it make the world a bit better? Simple reality check questions can help us to decide whether or not to absorb the advice or knowledge that the scholar(s) want to share.

One recent blatant example in Malaysia. A scholar (or a group of them) declared in the news that it would be un-islamic to wish merry Christmas to our Christian friends. This at least to me seems such an obvious illustration of the fallibility of scholars. Many other scholars have contradicted these statements but damage has been done. The most gullible of followers have absorbed the fallacy and stopped giving any wishes to their friends of other religion(s). If religious scholars create widening of gaps, increases in distance, incipience of fear or hatred, they very most likely show off their own human fallibility.

It is of extreme importance that whatever messages coming our way, to scrutinize them with simple reality check questions.

World peace is possible, it is not an illusion.
Let us believe in world peace and not allow any divisive thoughts,
no matter where they come from, enter our minds, hearts and soul.
If all people on earth want peace and believe in it, pray for it,
world peace will be ours in the not too distant future....

PS:
:) the last paragraph and perhaps the whole essay may be my own fallacy.
Always perform a reality check before absorbing any thought.


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